The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1887-04-09
i. cRYoLlTE MINING.
a VARIABLE Mineral Found Among Green
lands Icy Mountains.


a vaIr 1ble Mineral Found Among Green
- lands Icy Mountains.
liked with two old-time sea-cap-
tails the other day. One of these
hardy navigators was tall, full-faced,
well-buiIt, benevolent-lOoking man,
Captain Louchlan Mckay. In COM
mand of the Sovereign of the Seas,
one of the famous old clippers that
once made Americans proud of their
merchant marine, Captain Mckay left
= New York for San Francisco in August,
1851; the freight money amounted to
1000, very large sum to-day; bar
of -four in San Francisco in those
IS of gold fever sold for about $40.
Valparaiso, in a storm, Captain
szthay' ship was dismasted but rugged
up again, and reached her destination
in 102 days, which was quick pass
age. Discharging her cargo, the
gallant clipper sailed for Honolulu and
loaded with oil for New York, and made
the extraordinary time of eighty-two
DAYS.
For 10000 miles she sailed without
lacking or wearing, and in ten consec-
utive DAYS she made $500 miles. But
the days of the noble old clippers are
gone. and went to see this veteran OF
the sea about the ships that trade with
Greenland. His are the only vessels
that go regularly to the far-Off land of
Kane. They 90 out in ballast, for al
though Greenland imports wheat,
brandy, coffee, sugar, tobacco and fire
wood, it is not from this country. They
bring back a metal termed cryOlite,
sVEich they obtain at a port called
Ivigtut, on the southwest coast of
Greenland. It is bleak country, even
IN the short summer, during two
q months of which, June and July, the
sun is always above the horizon.
Moses, stunted shrubs, dwarfsh trees
and huckleberry bushes are about the
only vegetation, and the bare noun
tains in the grip of great glaciers and
the generally dead and desOlate aspect
of the country make it appear as
strange and unreal as that gray corpse
Of world, the moon.
Cryolite looks like ice, and hence the
name signifies ice stone. 1t is all taken
to Philadelphia and is used in manu-
featuring soda, alum, I've, porcelain.
other articles. The seven barks in the
trade each carry about 800 tons of this
strange mineral and make fourteen
voyages in a year. Last year they
brought 8, 400 tons to this country. Those
at tat are the only known cryolite
mines in the world SPECIMENS of this
mineral have been found in the Ural
Mountains and on Pixies Peak, but no
other actual mines but those in Green
land are known. It takes twenty days
to go to Ivigtut and thirty to return.
The Danish Government owns the
mines, and they are worked by a COM
pany that pays royalty to that Gov
eminent.
The vessels in this trade are built I'M
usually strong in order to withstand the
rigors of that frozen region; they have
steel plates on the bow, iron on the stem
or forward part of the vessel, double
planks on the sides, and are filled in
with timber, and yet three years
ago one of the stanch barks
was lost in the ice and one
that reached the open sea was never
afterwards heard from. The danger is
not so much from icebergs as from the
great blocks of floating ice, or ''fOw
ice." For eight months of the year, or
in the winter season, it is a continuous
night, and then navigation is especially
dangerous. During the four summer
months of the year vegetation makes
rapid progress, but it is of a dwarfish
character, and the tallest trees do not
exceed eighteen feet. The greatest
recorded cold of Greenland is 68 deg.
below zero, and the greatest heat 50
deg. above, while the average for the
year is 3 deg. above zero.
The little port whence the supply of
cryolite is obtained has population of
about $50 miners and as many Esqui-
maux. 1t is not a place that invites
civilization, and the natives, debauch ed
by the whisky of the Caucasians till
the sale of that beverage has been in
terdicted, probably think they do not
lose much by living in what the civiliz-
ed usually regard as a lost land, cap
tive in the grasp of the Arctic terrors
that guard the awful approaches to
that mysterious and fatal objective
point of human ambition and daring
the North Pole.-O W. Riggs, in
Philadelphia Press
-A-O-$
FASHION NOTES.